


The Road (and the Shot) Not Taken

by Telaryn



Category: Lethal Weapon (TV), Leverage
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Doppelganger, Escape, Gen, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Mistaken Identity, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: Quinn finds the perfect fall guy for a job that draws a little too much attention - if he can get out of his own growing moral code long enough to make it work.Seems Nate isn't the only one capable of taking a bad guy and breaking him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynne_monstr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynne_monstr/gifts).



> Like a lot of mod gifts this round, this story spun itself in a wildly different direction than I intended! I hope you like it Lynne - thank you for playing with us again.

Martin Riggs had ridden the line between sane and crazy his entire life. As a teen he’d grown addicted to the adrenaline rush that went along with risk taking long before ever trying drugs or alcohol. It had earned him four years of MVP trophies and a place on the All American football team in high school. It had put him through four years of state college, and driven him to SEAL training when the Marines and the Army had judged him unfit for their particular brands of crazy.

Only once in his adult life had Riggs made any sort of effort to be what could charitably be called ‘normal’, and the universe had pulled that particular rug out from under him so violently there were some days he wondered if he would ever find his balance again. As far outside the median as he’d drifted in the months since Miranda’s death, however, he was beginning to wonder if he’d inadvertently skated off the edge.

“Roger, I _swear_ ,” he began, finally able to tear his attention away from the impossible image frozen on the screen.

There was no sympathy to be found in his partner – not this time. Murtaugh was actually shaking with a mixture of rage and fear. A sniper’s bullet had come within inches of ending Trish’s life, and if the footage they’d been watching was to be believed, it was _Martin_ who had fired that bullet. “Don’t swear,” Roger growled softly. “Not about this, not to me…you have done some _crazy_ shit in the months we’ve been together…”

“I didn’t do it!” Riggs protested, coming to his feet too fast. Roger backed up, hands raised, and for a moment Martin wondered if his partner was going to take a swing at him - _again._ “Roger, think about it. What would be the point? Why would I even consider..?”

“You tell me,” Murtaugh countered, lunging past Riggs suddenly to gesture at the paused footage. “You tell me, Riggs, because that sure as hell looks like you, and you sure as hell look very comfortable with that rifle.”

Any argument Martin might have been able to marshal died as he focused on the image of a man that looked like him in a pose he’d occupied more times than he would ever be able to remember. Army Rangers hadn’t wanted him, but the SEALs had appreciated his near-mutant ability to make a long range kill with a single bullet. “It wasn’t me,” he repeated, a sob of frustration carrying the words out of his chest.

“Maybe you’ve got a twin somewhere,” Cruz said into the sudden stillness. Riggs started to round on Collins, to tell him to shut up, to stop being such a freak, that now wasn’t the time…

…and stopped.

 _They say everybody has a doppelganger somewhere._ “Occam’s Razor,” he said, turning back to the monitor and forcing himself to really study the image. “When you eliminate the impossible, what’s left – however improbable – must be the truth.”

"Roger?" he asked calmly, as the thing that had been bothering him about the video finally clicked into place, “if that’s me, how did I regrow a mustache in less than six hours?”  
*************************************  
Quinn wasn’t going to be able to return to Portland like he’d planned. The hit had gone off perfectly, but he’d been sloppy in his prep work and missed a security camera. An image of him actually taking the shot had hit the news impossibly quick, cutting his possible avenues of escape to virtually nothing and forcing him into hiding until the heat died down.

 _Federal witness? Who are you kidding? You stepped in it good this time._ Surrounded by district attorneys and all kinds of law enforcement, no less. The client hadn’t required the hit be splashy, but there had been nothing in the contract requiring discretion either. Quinn had gambled that the clean, easy shot would counter-balance any of the blow-back from doing the job so publicly.

Catching up the television remote, he turned up the sound. “Word from LAPD headquarters is that the image is one of Detective Martin Riggs. No one is saying how or why Detective Riggs was on that roof, or what his connection might be to the victim, but our reporters are continuing to sift through all available leads.”

Blowing out a quiet breath, Quinn hit mute again, trying to digest what he’d heard. They had him – they had him as dead to rights as he’d ever been, but they thought he was a police detective? _A local police detective to boot._ Tossing the remote back on the bed, Quinn sat on the mattress and picked up his tablet. He’d made a mental note to reach out to the team anyway, but typing “Detective Martin Riggs” into his search bar turned out to be as useful as anything Hardison could have done for him.

The mustache was ridiculous, and Quinn would have needed serious money from a client before letting his hair grow into something that so closely resembled a dead poodle, but otherwise the face was his. Enough that Quinn began thinking back over his own life as he called up the next article Google had handed him, looking for other points where their lives might have inadvertently intersected.

The more research he did on his doppelganger as the night wore on, the more Quinn was filled with a sense of “the road not taken” at work. Riggs was crazy in a way Quinn could have let himself go, if he hadn’t seen very early on where that sort of recklessness tended to get a man. Beneath the crazy, however, was a man who was very good at the same kind of work Quinn had taken on for himself.

_He just chose to play for the other team._

Deep down, Quinn knew he needed to be focused on a way of putting enough miles between himself and his doppelganger to start feeling safe again, but the more he learned, the more he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to leave Los Angeles without confronting Detective Martin Riggs; without seeing for himself just how much the two of them really had in common.  
*******************************  
Once Roger had come around to realizing that there was no way the shooter who had nearly killed his wife could have been his partner, he’d shifted gears in a smooth, quick, and very predictable direction. “I hate this plan.”

They’d been together long enough that Murtaugh’s reluctance didn’t get under Riggs’ skin anymore. Leaning back in his desk chair, Martin spread his hands. “Gimme an alternative then, Rog.” He met his partner’s eyes without flinching. “Anything.”

Murtaugh hadn’t been able to come up with anything better. So word went out that Detective Martin Riggs was going to be indicted for the shooting of a federal witness, and while the City Attorney railed and the Captain made arrangements for Riggs to be perp walked in very public fashion, CSU and the best lab technicians in the city sifted through mountains of evidence – looking for a man who by all rights couldn’t exist.

His escape from the van transporting him from the courthouse to the Metropolitan Detention Center had to be carefully orchestrated – even so, Riggs knew he was going to be owing favors to the guards he was going to have to appear to overpower for a very long time.

 _He wants the spotlight on me._ The more he’d delved into the facts of the case, the more certain Riggs was of how this was likely to play out. He had no way of knowing if the hitman knew going in that he had a twin in the LAPD, but coverage of the shooting had been so intense that Riggs had no doubt he knew now. Anyone smart enough to be hired to hit a federal witness would understand what that meant, and the escape opportunity it afforded him.

“He’ll want me back in custody,” Riggs had argued as he and Murtaugh had laid out their plan for the captain. “If I’m free there’s a chance this guy gets caught instead of me, but if I’m in custody everybody stops looking for alternate suspects.”

“And if you’re dead?” That question had come from Ronnie – the one person Riggs hadn’t been able to actually face up until now.

“He won’t risk it,” Riggs had said finally, forcing himself to meet his father-in-law’s worried gaze at last. “He won’t want to take the chance somebody cares who shot me.”

It was small comfort to find out he was right, when his nervous system exploded in that distinctive burst of light and heat that meant taser, instead of the hard, searing pain that would have meant he’d be reunited with Miranda at last.  
************************************  
Someday, Quinn swore to himself, he was going to get over his psychotic compulsion to finish a job – no matter how pear shaped everything went. “I could have been on my way to Singapore by now,” he grumbled, checking the fit of the handcuffs as well as the rope he’d used to secure Riggs’ unconscious body to a metal chair. “Should have been.”

And yet here he was, face to face with somebody as close to an identical twin as he was likely to ever meet – somebody he needed to keep at arm’s length if there was any hope of using Riggs as a distraction.

Frustrated with himself and the whole situation, Quinn finally reached out and slapped his prisoner on the side of his head, rocking it on his shoulders. “Come on,” he sighed, slapping him a second time. “I’m not buying that it takes you this long to shake off a taser blast.”

“When was the last time somebody lit you up like the Fourth of July?” His prisoner raised his head at last, shaking unruly curls back off his face.

Quinn took a step back and looked Riggs over. “You know, I’d be insulted at people mistaking us for each other, if you weren’t such a perfect scapegoat.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have been surprised you’d try to escape though. Trying to get justice for a self-serving waste of oxygen, or looking to save your ass?”

“Why can’t it be both?”

Quinn didn’t know why he saw the microscopic shift in Riggs’ focus – he certainly didn’t know what part of his psyche understood immediately what it meant. All he knew for certain was that between one heartbeat and the next he’d pivoted, sighted a target, and squeezed off a shot.

“No!” Riggs screamed behind him, as Quinn registered a tall, thin black man in a bullet proof vest crumpling to the ground and clutching his left leg.

“Hands!” Quinn ordered sharply, refocusing his aim on a head shot. “Get ‘em up!” Even as the newcomer obeyed, inwardly, he was starting to choke on a swell of panic. The idea of using Riggs as a distraction to cover his escape worked, but only as long as nobody besides him and Riggs knew there were two of them. Whoever the intruder was, Quinn was going to have to kill him.

“Don’t.” Riggs’ voice was actually shaking. Quinn barely resisted turning around; between the two of them, the newcomer was still the bigger threat. “Please. Look – I don’t know who you are, or how we got here, but I’m pretty sure where you’re heading with this.”

 _Someday you’re going to figure out when to walk away._ Grimacing, Quinn cross-stepped until he had both Riggs and the newcomer in view. 

“He’s got a family. Wife. Kids – a baby girl. Please.” Riggs was openly pleading now – Quinn couldn’t distinguish any subterfuge in the man. “I know you’re in a hard spot here, but you don’t have to kill him.”

Quinn laughed harshly. “You want me to believe he’s going to keep his mouth shut? That he won’t come after me the second I leave?” Shifting his aim for a moment, he drew down on Riggs’ skull. “You have a family too?”

There were tears glinting in the corner of his doppelganger’s dark eyes – hints of pain going very deep – but all Riggs said out loud was, “No. Nobody.”

If he killed Riggs, it could still muddy the waters enough to allow him a clean getaway. Quinn tightened his finger on the trigger, looking directly into his captive’s eyes as he prepared to shoot.

 _Who are you?_ So many questions. “He’s your partner, isn’t he?” he asked. Calm now, Riggs nodded.

“You’d die for him?” Another nod.

Somewhere a group of thieves and con artists were laughing at him. Quinn held his aim a beat longer, then lowered his weapon. “This isn’t over,” he said to Riggs before turning and running.

_Not by a long shot._


End file.
